Paint
by LuteLyre
Summary: Really, Sai has always been just as smart as he is.


A/N: Hey! I'm back for a brief moment. This is a drabble, and a crack pairing. I'm not sure where it came from, but I guess this is the way my twisted mind works. My Naru/Gaa fic is coming soon, no worries. :) For now, enjoy my heartless Shikamaru.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

**Paint**

Grey.

Tired and wired and mean.

Shikamaru hated the color grey with a passion.

Grey like the sharp edge of his kunai blade. Grey like his mother's drawn face when he showed her his new Anbu tattoo and she kicked him out of her house. Grey like the dull straps of his anbu uniform, grey in his head and around the corners of his vision as he gets stabbed or shocked or cut again and maybe this will be the time he falls and doesn't get up again, maybe, oh he hopes so.

Grey like the shadows he twists and manipulates and ensnares people in, holding them still and helpless and frozen, sometimes 10 or 20 or 30 people at once, so that Sai can slip in like liquid silver and slit their throats without so much as a protesting murmur. When he lets the shadows loose and they all tumble like puppets with cut strings to the floor, Shikamaru doesn't want his hands to tremble because this was the smartest way to complete the mission and he should be pleased that it was so simple and easy, so very easy.

Grey like a pair of slanted eyes with nothing much in them at all, ever, that look at him so steadily and so evenly that Shikamaru wants to scream, because he's a genius and he hates not being able to know what someone's thinking.

Really, Sai has always been just as smart as he is.

X

White.

Ageless and timeless and blank.

Shikamaru hates the color white almost more than the color grey.

White like his Anbu mask, staring cruelly back at him and asking how many babies he killed this month, how many children will he kill today, how many more times will he cut off fingers to make a point or plot an entire family's slaughter. He throws it to clatter in the corner but it just laughs and smiles and sometimes Shikamaru thinks he can hear that raspy, malicious chuckle echoing in his ears the next time he wets his blade with blood.

White like the parchment that Sai splays out against the night air, hands moving so fast they are nothing more than long-fingered blurs, painting creatures so terrible and beautiful that Shikamaru, perched behind him and hidden under his porcelain face, feels his breath hitch in his throat. The ink writhes, twists its way off the page like bones splitting from skin, and Shikamaru is horribly in awe because he is factual and he is analytical and he doesn't understand how Sai, who has a meaningless smile and empty eyes, can dream such horrifying glory into existence.

White like Sai's skin, the twist and flex of abdominal muscles as he arches and spirals through the air on the practice fields, the flared wings of his shoulder blades as he pants under Shikamaru, bowing his back and lifting his hips but never making a sound, never any sounds at all. When he comes with a strained neck and a swallowed gasp and turns over wearing a thoughtless smile to finish Shikamaru with his white, white hands, it is so fluid and economical that Shikamaru is angry. He is angry and he doesn't know why, but when he comes he see's Sai's ink on the inside of his eyelids and maybe he wishes Sai would paint him.

The thought makes him hard, and he thrusts meaner and bites sharper, mostly because he is a heartless bastard.

X

Red.

Anger and traitor and death.

Shikamaru hates the color red perhaps most of all.

Red like Sai's mouth on his cock, perfect and hot and damn, he never expected the time he fell and didn't get up again to be like this, but right now he can't complain. He has red on his throat from Sai's knife and red on his lips from his dying heart pumping blood the wrong way, but Sai is sucking his brain out with long, hard pulls of a swollen mouth and his pretty artist hands are soft and delicate and good and Shikamaru thinks that this is a nice little parting gesture of Sai to do, really, considering how much of a dick Shikamaru has been in the past.

Red like all the things Shikamaru's lost and didn't bother to find again because he has always been just a bit too lazy, for all his genius. Red like his fury, hot and singing under his veins when Sai pinned him and slit him and whispered a dry little apology against his lips, perfunctory and polite because the sly little shit never painted him did he? Shikamaru had never asked and now it was too late. Sai's tongue swirls and dips and god, but it feels fucking good, so good Shikamaru is having trouble bothering to care that this is the last time he's ever going to get his dick sucked, because he is bleeding out on the floor.

Red like all the blood that is seeping out of him and giving him a nice picturesque deathbed, red like all the blood that he's ever spilt from other people's veins, and thats a lot, practically enough to drown in. Shikamaru comes like he's dying because he is this time, isn't that a hilarious joke. Sai wipes his mouth with the back of one hand and stands up, little crimson tongue licking his lips because he's a little emotionless shit isn't he, didn't Shikamaru know that from the beginning. Then Sai is gone without a sound, not even a goodbye. But then, they are professionals and Anbu and shinobi, and to be honest Shikamaru didn't really expect one.

He is alone, with his laughing Anbu mask and his bloody lips and grey clouding up his vision on the edges, blurring all his smart thoughts and his smart decisions and his smart ninja goals.

X

Shikamaru thinks he wishes he could've seen Sai's paintings again.

X

**Fin**.

A/N: Who was the traitor? Your choice.

Ahh my lovely little bastard Shika. :D


End file.
